The Syntactic Formulas Used in Food and Eating Proverbs in Jordanian Arabic: A Linguistic Analysis Hamzah Faleh Migdadi  English Language Department, Al-Hussan Group for Education and Training, Saudi Arabia Mohammad Fayyad M. Alqasem English Language Department, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia Shadi Majed Alshraah English Language Department, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia Mustafa Mohammad Alqudah Department of English, University of Hail, Saudi Arabia Bowroj Sameh Taany English Language Department, Al-Hussan Group for Education and Training, Saudi Arabia Abstract—The present study focuses on studying colloquial Jordanian proverbs and sayings, particularly food and saying proverbs. It employs a descriptive research design to examine the syntactic aspects of those proverbs and sayings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather the data from the informants. The current study came up with a set of conclusions. Proverbs related to food and eating are similar to other kinds of proverbs regarding the utilization of syntactic aspects. Furthermore, it appears that these proverbs are limited to specific syntactic structures, namely, imperative, interrogative and verbless clauses in terms of their syntactic structures. To be more accurate, the verbless clause is the most 51 prominent structure (11 proverbs), then the imperative form (8 proverbs) and the interrogative (5 proverbs) one respectively. Index Terms—proverb, syntactic formulas, saying, colloquial proverbs I. INTRODUCTION The proverb is a brief, memorable traditional saying or statement that expresses a general truth or advice about life (Winick, 2003). They are, in fact, short statements that do not consist of long parts; they cannot be a paragraph. Due to their brevity; they can be memorable. Proverbs express a general truth about our life. Their usages in our life provide us with a pearl of wisdom about a certain issue. In addition to that, people use proverbs to deal with general issues, for instance, they use them to deliver their long messages with short utterances. Proverbs are so popular due to their nature and role; this suggests that there are a lot of topics covered by proverbs. Based on the researcher's observation, proverbs cover a wide range of themes associated with human beings and their social roles in communities. It is safe to say that proverbs discuss issues ranging from the most trivial to the most complicated. Regarding the Arabic language, some studies examine proverbs from different dialects, and they show that Arabic proverbs are identical in the case of the messages delivered; most, if not all, Arabic proverbs share similar topics, views and attitudes. Such a situation stems from the fact that all dialects have mutual cultural, social and religious backgrounds. Regarding their formal properties, they are fixed utterances i.e. none of their parts can be omitted or replaced. In other words, if there is any change in their content or form, they are no longer proverbs. According to Norrick (1985), proverbs have a fixed form. There was a consensus among some scholars (see, for example, Russo, 1983 and Abrahams, 1968) that proverbs are to be complete sentences. In fact, such a claim cannot be generalized. For instance, there are many incomplete-sentence proverbs in terms of formality such as like father like son. The popularity of acceptance of proverbs among people is a reason to show their important role in language and culture. They are generally in most spheres of social life, if not at all. It is safe to say that proverbs constitute part and  Corresponding Author. ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 471-476, March 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1402.23 © 2023 ACADEMY PUBLICATION